In this hokey, schmalzy soap opera about a black maid working for a Jewish family in 1963 Louisiana, the cast is better than the text. The script is by Tony Kushner – America’s most over-rated unimpressive playwright — who based it on childhood memories. It was first presented in 2003 and it had the same flaws though less glitz, which must have been added to cover up the flaws.
“Fairycakes,” written and directed by Douglas Carter Beane is a clever, often funny, revisionist take on fairy tales Including Cinderella, Pinocchio, and Peter Pan for kids with a leavening of Midsummer Night’s Dream for grown-ups. All in rhyming couplets. And with a few contemporary takes, including the manipulation of fear and guilt on which families are built.
New York’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was started in 1924 by immigrant workers at Macy’s Department Store. They had escaped repressive conditions in Russia and elsewhere and had a workers’ sense of solidarity and appreciation. They wanted to celebrate this American holiday with a European-style festival of the sort their parents had enjoyed. What would they think of the current parades that replace culture with advertising to “watch this” and “buy this”!
“Morning’s at Seven” written in 1939 by Paul Osborn, starts out as a small town family story of the innocent 1920s. It’s often comic, but it’s also a serious look at the difficulties and hidden sorrows that afflict people who seem quite comfortable, discontents that begin to dominate as they get older.
There are two good parts to “The Visitor.” The first is when the sallow-faced economics professor (David Hyde Pierce) attempts to educate his students about the worst neoliberal economists of our age (Samuelson, others) though he doesn’t call them that. The second is the professor’s very passionate – no – raging, excoriation of the American political system that condemns many asylum seekers to certain death in the dictatorships they fled, as has in fact been proved. But putting on a good play requires more than being “woke.”
On election eve I went to a political debate between the Democratic and Republican candidates for mayor of New York. I had a good time. No, it wasn’t between the two lackluster candidates for mayor 2021. It was a much more exciting, well, much more fun event between the candidates and campaign boosters of Jimmy Walker (Martin Dockery), running for re-election, and Fiorella LaGuardia (Christopher Romero Wilson), seeking to dethrone the crook.
I know Brecht through his iconic plays, “Mother Courage,” “The Threepenny Opera” and more. But I hadn’t heard his poetry, which was often more directly political than the allegorical stage works. In “Brecht on Brecht,” the TBTB company provides those words in an entertaining cabaret style pastiche of talk and song that takes one through his political life and artistic career.
GB Shaw is the doyen of political plays, and when you see them, you have to put yourself back in time to imagine the outrage of the elites. How they railed at his prickling their class oppression of women, by men and the rich, their snobbery and always their hypocrisy. One of the favorites is “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” a 1902 feminist satire of the times given a fine production by the Gingold Theatrical Group. Except it’s maybe not so outdated!
It’s back, along with the iconic white spider that hangs from the Jefferson Market (Courthouse) Library at Sixth Avenue and 10th Street.
And the big cutout figures, held so high that even people behind the crowded barriers can see them.
If for nothing else, people should go to this play to see a master actor Ruben Santiago-Hudson create a neighborhood full of characters, giving life and color to each one, beginning with “Nanny,” the den-mother of the crew who ran two boarding houses, one for the violent and the crazy. He is the writer, director and performer of the piece. His change of voice, body language, facial expression for each character is magical.
Oct 16, 2021 – “United States vs. Reality Winner” directed by Sonia Kennebeck is a fake documentary that opened the Double Exposure Film Festival October 13th. It is a deceptive and dishonest film that carefully avoids telling the true story of this phony “heroine” who leaked an unverified document that said the Kremlin hacked U.S. voting machines and was sentenced to prison under the Espionage Act.
Sept 27, 2021 – Former hedge fund CEO Marc Cohodes discusses in this one-hour interview Overstock’s charges that Cohodes and associates faked reports to drive down the price of Overstock they were shorting, Overstock’s case against Goldman Sachs that it (and Merrill Lynch) used naked shorting to drive down its price, Cohodes’ testimony in that case about Goldman creating shares out of options trades, and why he thinks the Citadel empire should be broken up.
Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s “Pass Over” is a surreal satiric funny biting clever horrific vision of what life is like for two young black men living in a ghetto whose borders are so fixed they can only dream of getting out, of “passing over,” only one of the meanings of the play’s title.
Ngozi Anyanwu’s play starts out appearing to be a feminist take about a relationship gone wrong. And the first person we see is curiously called “You 1” which means there will be a “You 2.” Perhaps that means the viewers can identify with either or each.
Directed by Patricia McGregor, the play excels in its acting, especially by the brilliant Daniel J. Watts, less in the text which is sometimes gripping, but then unsatisfying for the questions it leaves unanswered.
Aug 18, 2021- Democratic Party insider Robert Shapiro, an economist who was a top advisor to the campaign of Bill Clinton, served as his undersecretary of commerce, and then advised the Democratic nominees after him, breaks with establishment economics to target the corruption of naked short selling.
July 28, 2021 – The Big Lie has shown its power in the major media’s adoption of William Browder’s Magnitsky hoax. Say and write the Lie over and over, and journalists in the “best” papers will discount the need for proof. And they will ignore contradicting evidence sent to them. Especially when it challenges their government’s narrative.
“Judgment Day” is an enormously clever, funny, a bit profound play by Rob Ulin about a very corrupt lawyer, Sammy Campo (a terrific rotten-to-the-core Jason Alexander). How corrupt? He’s running a child-slave garment operation where kids get fed “healthy” paste, if they do the work.
People are traveling again, and the best choices for destinations are outdoors. Be safe! Feel safe! Key West is perfect for that. On the list of what I like to do best are to take a sunset cruise and visit the Botanical Gardens.
The American Prospect, June 22, 2021 – In the aftermath of the GameStop run-up in January, retail investors found telltale signs of a common yet egregious trading fraud by major brokers and hedge funds. What happened around GameStop can be explained only by massive counterfeiting of shares.
June 2, 2021 – This is my interview of Wes Christian, the Houston attorney who has been in the forefront of bringing naked short selling cases for twenty years.
By Catherine Austin Fitts, Aug 19, 2021 – Lucy Komisar is one of the top financial fraud investigative reporters in the new media. Lucy is known for unraveling the most complex financial frauds – particularly those involving sophisticated cross-border transactions.
When I learned Lucy was doing a deep dive on the GameStop trading war, including the latest on naked short selling oversight and regulation – a problem that has plagued American capital markets for a long time – I had to get her back on the Solari Report. If you have not yet discovered Lucy and her website The Komisar Scoop, you are in for a treat.
June 8, 2021 – This is a one-hour video. Click the first arrow to see it all. Starting with why you don’t read or hear this in the corporate media. You can see video segments of it below. With some of the longer key sections in text at the end.
June 6, 2021-The Securities and Exchange Commission, set up after the 1929 stock market crash, has been a corrupt operation captured by the stock brokers and Wall Street actors it was supposed to regulate. Here is the history, told in text and in a video I did for Superstonk.
May 20, 2021 – My interview on youtube tells through three dramatic stories how corrupt brokers, hedge funds and their accomplices in government and the media steal from stock market investors. This article includes some of text.
May 10, 2021 – It’s always quite amazing when pseudo-legitimate journalists write Russophobic stories insisting that their evidence-free fabrications are true. The latest: Nick Cohen, a Guardian contributor, has published a full-of-falsehoods commentary on a book written by Catherine Belton, a longtime Russophobic journalist.
